Meet Virginia, Day Two

***For Meet Virginia, Day One, click here***

Day 2 started bright and early with a trip to my new favorite place, the Williamsburg Winery.
All the times that I’ve been to Williamsburg and had their wine, I had never been to the winery itself. Clearly, I was stupid, as it was awesome. We found a deal online where you could do the tour and tasting, as well as lunch at the adjacent restaurant, for a very reasonable price – I would highly recommend this option to anyone heading to the area!

The tour took us through the winecellars, where we saw a number of wine barrels.

The tour guide told us that these wine barrels, which are very expensive, can only be used four times before they have to be discarded. To try to recoup the cost, the winery sells the old barrels to various places, including Colonial Williamsburg, to be used as trash cans. Until then, though, they are put to good use. This one was making Merlot:

Next, the tour took us past the room where the wine is bottled (the tour guide thought that this was their blackberry dessert wine being bottled here),and into a room which displayed a number of wine-related antiques, including old bottles that lined the display cases.Finally, we arrived at the tasting room, where we tasted six of the wines that were availableout of our pretty souvenir glasses (because that’s what I needed – another wine glass!).After the tasting, we headed over to the restaurant for lunch.They seated us on the outside patio,and soon, lunch was served, including this gorgeous cheese platter that Taryn ordered.

After lunch, we headed back inside to the gift shop to make our wine purchases. The winery gave a discount if you purchased more than 12 bottles of wine, so we decided it was only polite to take advantage of this generous offer.On the way out of the winery, we stumbled over something quite surprising – our foreign friends from Sunday, the ones from the first plantation, had followed us to the winery and were heading in as we were heading out. Luckily, no one used any racial epithets this time, and we were not there to watch them harass yet another young female tour guide. We can only imagine that it would have been worse here, as there was alcohol to fuel their interrogation.

After we left the winery, we headed over to Jamestown, where Taryn had never been. For those of you who haven’t been there before, this is the site of the first permanent English settlement in America, and it’s still actively being preserved by archaeologists. A good deal of the site has been identified or reproduced already, including the remains of a tavern,a church,and a fort.The site is right on the James River, and still has a great view (which I'm sure was foremost in the mind of the starving, freezing colonists).They also have a very 70’s-looking museum that displays some of the artifacts they’ve unearthed, and other historical information. And also air conditioning. We were ready for air conditioning by then.

After Jamestown, we went for a quick drive around the Yorktown Battlefield, stopping at the most photogenic sites, including British redoubts (now helpfully protected by a chain link fence so you can’t impale yourself on the spikes),cannons,and an old house called the Moore House, which was the site of surrender negotiations in 1781.

To finish the day, we headed to Colonial Williamsburg. We shopped for awhile, including at The Allergen Store, as I like to call it:

We also saw the reality of what happens to wine barrels when they become old and decrepit:and also, a colonial squirrel! This one is for you, Larry:

We went to dinner at the King’s Arms Tavern, or, as a work colleague of Taryn’s calls it, The King’s Armpit.Despite the nickname, the tavern ended up being a rather lovely way to end the day – any place that has champagne cocktails and wine coolers (real ones that were a lovely blend of red wine and lemon soda, not those sickening things that come in bottles) on their menu is fine by me! After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to prepare for the next day, arguably the most exciting day of them all – Busch Gardens day!

***For Meet Virginia, Day Three, click here***

Meet Virginia: Day One

So this past weekend, Taryn, Kathy and I traveled to southeastern Virginia to engage in general merriment. We left early Sunday morning. McKenna was a little confused - she's very used to being left at my house when Taryn leaves with suitcases; however, when I brought one out, she was a little freaked.
Taryn, the master packer, managed to fit all of our stuff, as well as McKenna's stuff, into my car with room to spare.
With everyone in the car, we set off for our first stop: my parents' house, where McKenna had reserved a room for the next few days. She was a bit perplexed - I'm convinced that dog can figure out the direction of the car, and knows when she's going somewhere new.
However, once we arrived and McKenna saw the size of my parents' yard as compared to mine, she brightened up a bit. According to my mother, she and Holly got along very well during her visit; they chased squirrels and flirted with the young stud next door and had a wonderful time.

Once we left McKenna, we set out through Virginia, making only short pit stops at Starbucks for breakfast and at Target to buy a new ipod radio adaptor to replace the crappy one I had, which was broken. After we got out of northern Virginia (where there was surprisingly little traffic!), we stopped at a Subway in a gas station for lunch.
This was quite an interesting place. The Subway advertised a monstrous sandwich known as "The Feast,"
and the gas station advertised plenty of "Clean Restrooms." I suppose, as opposed to dirty ones? Which, why would you advertise that? Is it implying that they're dirty if they don't use an adjective?

On the way to our hotel in Williamsburg, we stopped at a few plantations. The first, called the Shirley Plantation, was rather entertaining. The house and grounds were lovely, of course, but it was the company that made the experience what it was. First, we bought tickets in the gift shop, and learned that they had a contest to name their baby chickens. Of course, we suggested a list of Dynasty-inspired names. Hopefully they will choose our entry, and Fallon and Alexis will be running around the Shirley Plantation for years to come.
Next, we met our tour group on the steps of the main house. It was there that we met our tour guide, a knowledgeable lady close to our age. She complimented our chick name entry, so we immediately liked her. However, the poor girl had to deal with the rest of our tour group, which contained a handful of old foreign people who persisted in asking useless and/or inappropriate questions.
One such gentleman asked if the plantation had slaves. When this fact was confirmed, he proceeded to ask questions about the slaves using words that nice people do not say. Hopefully, he just was unaware of the inappropriateness of these words, as he was clearly from another culture, but either way, it did not set a nice tone. To the tour guide's credit, she did keep things moving briskly after that question.
The same group was also quite enthralled with the plastic food that was set out throughout the grounds to illustrate what colonial people ate. Now, as you all well know, I am plenty enthralled with bacon, but not to the point that I'd hold up the tour to discuss a fake version of it (which I think should be called 'facon') with the poor tour guide.
After the tour, we went outside to view the grounds. There was a lovely view of the river,
the smoke house,
other plantation animals (including a exhibitionist goat who stuck his posterior into most of my pictures),
and our personal favorite, a kid on a leash (who at one point, did a face plant walking out of a building. Don't worry, he was fine.)

After we left Shirley, we went to another James River plantation called Berkeley Plantation, the birthplace of William Henry Harrison. This plantation was also beautiful, with a huge old main house
and extensive grounds that offered lovely views of the river,
as well as some hay that we think was just there as a prop (as it was growing foliage).
There was a very informative tour of the main house, and our tour group was much larger than at Shirley. None of the people in this group used any racial slurs (accidentally or not), which was nice, although some people did have trouble following the directions not to touch anything. One room has a shawl that was said to belong to William Henry Harrison; in fact, the tour guide said that rumor has it that he used it during his last few weeks of life. Despite the fact that it was likely teeming with 200 year old germs, and that it was ancient and probably very fragile, one lady decided it was OK to touch the thing as soon as the tour guide moved on. Niiiiice.

After the tour, we wandered down to the James River.
There were a bunch of flowers along the paths that were in full bloom,
as well as one lonely, tiny, empty colonial vodka bottle that someone has graciously left to decorate the landscape.
There was also a willow tree that tried to attack Taryn.

After the vicious willow tree attack, we set off toward Williamsburg and our hotel. After checking in, we headed back out to Yorktown to see what was going on. We walked past a concert in the yard of Grace Episcopal Church,

and went to the Riverwalk to search for a place for dinner. We ended up at the Riverwalk Restaurant, which was right on the York River.

We all got various salads, which came on super cute fish-shaped plates.

After dinner, we wandered around the area, looking for places to take pictures.

It was still early when we left Yorktown, so we decided to go play miniature golf. Pirate Mini Golf was down the street from our hotel, so we headed over.

It was pretty crowded, and we ended up waiting awhile before we were able to start.

At one point, Taryn made quite an impressive hit...so impressive, in fact, that her ball went all the way off the green and down a waterfall. We had to share balls after that.

There were some interestingly designed holes...such as this one, which had two protruberances blocking the hole.

We took the game very seriously, though, lost balls and strange green bumps included.

Finally, we finished the game and retired to our hotel for the evening, to rest up for a busy Monday.

***For Meet Virginia: Day Two, click here***

That's What She Said, Installment 1

So, very soon I will blog about our trip to Williamsburg - many stories to tell, I will assure you - but first I will discuss my trip to the grocery store upon my return this afternoon. I'm wandering around, buying what I need, la-di-da, and I come upon this, in the international foods aisle:
There are no words. Let's just say that I can't wait to get to work tomorrow and show everyone what they can buy at the Giant by my house.

Livin' Just To Find Emotion

As a follow-up to my earlier post, this spring's TV finale season also contained something a little different - Fox chose to air one of their fall pilots after American Idol the other day. If you are reading this, stop right now, go to iTunes, and download the pilot episode of Glee. When have I ever steered you wrong? Go on, I'll wait.

OK, if you still need to be convinced, watch this and tell me it's not one of the greatest things ever. I can't stop watching this video. And if that makes me a dork, then so be it.



See? Awesome! And, you wouldn't think it could get any better, but apparently Kristin Chenoweth and Victor Garber are going to be appearing on it later in the fall. Kathy's already mad at me because I got her hooked on this show; be cool like us and watch it!

I'm One Of the Drunk Ones!

As you all well know, May is one of my favorite months of the year. Pretty weather, the pool opens (the pool I pay for, not the pool that pays me), and also, the end of the TV season. You wouldn't think this would excite me - after all, it means no new network primetime shows of value until at least September - but season finales are usually pretty awesome. This year was no different - 30 Rock, which is easily one of the greatest network shows on air right now, closed their season with a music video. A fantastic music video, which Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) has organized to try to find a kidney donor for his father, Milton Green (Alan Alda). While it's pretty funny in its own right, one can not truly understand its awesomeness unless they have seen its inspiration. Note the death look that Paul Simon gives Kenny Rogers (not Michael McDonald, as I had stupidly originally written), the Lionel Richie thumbs up, and the generally stoned look that a sweatshirted Diana Ross wears throughout the video:



Now that you have been enlightened, I give you.....Kidney Now!

Bow Wow Wow Yippie Yo Yippie Yay

So, this past weekend we traveled to my aunt's house in Pittsburgh for the Easter holiday weekend, home of my furry cousins and the Labrador horse next door. Holly and Rusty had never accompanied us to Pittsburgh before, because Rusty did not play nicely with others (particularly not his cousins Lily and Molly). However, between Rusty dying last month and the fact that my parents are having their kitchen redone, Holly is having quite the traumatic couple of weeks, so she came with us. However, her trauma wasn't over. First, she had to suffer the indignities of the seatbelt I bought her for the car ride:

She was also rather confused when we left her in the car to go into the souvenir shop in the very exciting town of Breezewood, which has more Steeler merchandise than I've ever seen in one place outside of Pittsburgh. Of course, this errand was the reason that my mother wanted me to leave my office as early as I did, work be damned.

We also stopped at the world's most awesome candy store, which, in addition to frightening Holly when we left her in the car, also made her angry when we wouldn't give her any chocolate.

Once we arrived in Pittsburgh, Holly was still rather confused. She spent a bit of time exploring her new surroundings:

and then spent the rest of the evening moving from lap to lap so as to avoid altercations with her furry cousins.

By Saturday, she had gotten more used to her new situation. Not completely, though...just to Hunter the Beast, who is easily five times her size. Apparently, she likes them tall, dark, and stupid. She spent the better part of the day glued to his side:

before trying to entice him to play with flirtatious tail-wagging (apologies for the strange camera angles at the end).

Clearly the tail-wagging worked - he was soon chasing her too, although I'm not entirely convinced that it wasn't because he hoped she'd throw a ball for him to fetch.

She did eventually warm up to her furry cousins as well - she and Kiley took a nap together,

and while she and Lily were never exactly friends, they did sit close to each other by the end of the weekend.

Despite the fun she had, and the new gentleman friend she made, she was ready to go home on Sunday (despite the seatbelt hatred).

Oh, and on the way out of town, we drove past a house who had put bunny ears on the reindeer figurines in their front yard, which had been there since Christmas. Niiiiiice.